Love at First Sight

I absolutely do not believe in love at first sight. I’m not a hopeless romantic or even particularly sentimental. I do not believe in star signs or manifestation or god. But then I saw Jack for the first time, standing outside a pub.

Now, I still don’t believe in love at first sight but something changed inside of me at that moment. I said to myself ‘oh no, I’m in trouble.’ I literally said those words out loud. There was no fear, none whatsoever. After a break up that tore everything down around me for years after, I had actively avoided any kind of emotional risk. But with Jack, there was no fear.

I looked at him and I knew that this, that he, would be the greatest love of my life. It didn’t matter if it only lasted three months. Jack would be the love I remembered on my death bed. There was no doubt or second-guessing. We hadn’t even made eye contact and all of that flooded through me. It was an absolute truth, there was no point doubting something that definitive.

I didn’t care if it didn’t last, I welcomed the potential of that heartbreak because it would be worth it to experience whatever was ahead of us.

What was it that made me so sure? I’ve no idea. It wasn’t just physical attraction, it was beyond all of that. Loving Jack is a part of me. It feels like it was always in me. Meeting him was like turning the light on in a room that was always in my house, I just hadn’t seen it yet. Just like Ramona. She is an absolute. She is an essential part of my core, it doesn’t feel like I could have ever existed without her being a part of me. Both she and Jack feel like a part of a plan that I hadn’t seen but had always been there. Loving them isn’t a choice. Loving them is who I am.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. But maybe there’s something better than that.